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A tale that might be interesting and useful for you :) I wrote this down 2022-11-8 to 2022-11-12.
A relative wants to buy a new pedelec. I went along to the first shop, then later another one. The experiences at shop 2 were so bad that I decided to write it all down.
I wanted to see about ebikes with rear wheel motors, ebikes with nexus hub but with click shifters instead of rotational shifters and automatic Nuvinci gearing. The first guy knew nothing about rear wheel motors, and didn't know if it was possible to use click shifters on the models they sold. Yes, that is possible, the hubs are the same, you just choose click or rotational shifters so you can change the rotational shifters to push button shifters for a Nexus hub. As I mentioned in my reviews of hubs with rotational shifters such as the Nuvinci (named Enviolo since a few years) I don't like rotational shifters for good reasons: Slipping in the wet, too much movement of your wrist. My relative feels the same way. This was guy just some sales flunky, but after a while an older guy who knew a lot more came to see us.
We talked about rotating shifters and he thought it wasn't possible to put a click shifter on a Shimano nexus hub that comes with a rotational shifter, something about adjusting it. Eh, BS, that works just fine. But he knew enough about other matters. We tried a standard bike with Nexus hub and rotational shifter, then a "Tour pro wave" ebike with Nuvinci automatic gearing from the German brand "Advanced ebike". With this hub you set your favourite pedalling cadence and you just push the pedals and go. This was the first time I tried an ebike with the automatic Nuvinci, eh Enviolo, hub (the Enviolo TR automatic, with a Bosch performance with 65 Nm torque and Intuvia display), and I liked it a lot! The display shows speed, cadence settings, range, etc. I don't use ebikes at all, but I felt this was pretty cool and all the others to me seemed like worthless compared to this one, so once you have used this automatic gearing, you are spoilt! :) But it was pretty expensive, about €4800 (whereas ebikes with Nexus hub and fewer features can be bought for ca. €2500), and my relative and a friend noticed that putting in the battery was quite a hassle for this guy from the bike shop, such as that you need to rotate the handlebar such that the fender is not in the way as it is inserted from the bottom and the battery is fairly heavy. This could be an issue for her at home.
We left thinking about it, it was not up to me of course. My relative liked it but wanted to look at other options, especially about phone connectivity for the Enviolo that we had read about, as this one did not have the newest 'Kiox' display and likely did not feature this.
One thing that was interesting to me were the fenders on these higher end types of ebikes: They are made from fairly thick aluminium and are double layer with ditto sides so they are essentially a rounded box which makes them very stiff. The fenders are used as mounting points for the rear rack in most such bikes too, which you can't do with normal light weight bicycle fenders.
All in all the advice here was not bad, but it could have been better.
This shop deserves to be named as this is one of the worst cases of bullshitting I have ever encountered.
My relative found another ebike with automatic Enviolo hub, which for some reason not many brands use. I had a look and didn't see for example bicycles from the Dutch brands Gazelle and Sparta with this automatic hub. If you are going to spend ca. €4500 for an ebike, you can spend another €300 for this system! So why don't they offer models with the automatic hub? The ebike she found is the Bergamont e-ville. The closest shop that had such bikes was 12gobiking, and my relative said they have a test track where you can test ride the bikes. That sounded interesting.
So she and I and a friend of her went there by car, about a 20 km drive. The bike we looked at most of all was the Bergamont e-ville but we wanted to try another bike or 2 as well. A guy approached us and we got talking about various topics. Sometimes I was away for a test ride, and at other times my relative was away and we told each other what happened in the mean time after we made a test ride, so I will tell you what happened in approximate order.
We mentioned that we wanted to try out this Bergamont e-ville that we were standing next to, we mentioned that we liked the Enviolo automatic hub, but also asked about ebikes with Nexus hub and asked if they were available with click shifters instead of rotating shifters. After the initial question I asked several times about a click shifter with the Nexus hubs but he answered each time with some BS about the hub not being able to work with the motor in the Bergamont e-ville which has a high torque. Why the fook was he talking about that? There are e-bikes with a middle motor and Nexus hub, are there any with push shifters rather than rotating shifters? I think I mentioned replacing the rotational shifter with a push button shifter but it didn't matter, he was either stupid or wanted to push us in the direction of the Bergamont as that was far more expensive, and for whatever of these reasons answered unasked questions (typical for politicians by the way, it is a manipulation tactic). We gave him the opportunity to push in a certain direction of course by telling him we like th eEnviolo with automatic gear changes and that we don't like rotational shifters. So on the one hand you could think that giving of information of disliking rotational shifters is a bad move as a salesman then has information he can use to push you into a certain direction, on the other hand if you are aware of this then it doesn't matter and how a salesmen responds to the given information is actually useful (if you are interested in not just buying a bike, but buying a bike with a shop that deserves a sale) as it gives you information on how a salesman and consequently likely the whole shop, behaves. So I gave up on this question. We made some test rides on the 'test track' which was an indoor area delimited with fences, and a short 'hill' made from wood construction. This test track was too short to get up to speed (I felt 20 km/h was the maximum I could safely reach), and the hill was just not enough of a hill to really test how riding on a hill goes. My relative later told me however that it was useful in that she heard the middle motor, one of the newest from Bosch, the performance CX with 85 Nm torque, fairly well, which might be something you would not notice much outside on a day with a lot of wind (and thus wind noise).
I liked the bike, just like the previous one with automatic Enviolo that we tried, the Advanced e-bike "Tour pro wave". The display was a newer 'Kiox' display which offers integration with the phone and navigation.
At some point I asked whether Bergamont is a German brand. He said it is a Swiss brand. Aha, but then to the next point: Why is there no frame lock included by default? He said it was due to ratifications. Hmm, that sounded like BS to me, even for a Swiss brand. All other brands include frame locks for the Dutch market (where frame locks are standard), and this brand can't do that?
I also asked about a trio of Enviolo bikes with standard gear changer, i.e. rotational shifter. In one case it was very light going, I thought at first the cable might not be connected! But I saw the gear shifter at the hub move... Two other bikes had heavier going shifters, one was reasonable, the last one was very heavy going. The easy going one was OK in my view. So why was there this huge difference? He didn't know. Don't these people check out these things? Perhaps it was cable tension? Different versions of the hubs?
While I made a test ride (on that Bergamont bike or another bike with derailleur that we tried just to see what it would be like with an ebike with Nexus hub with push shifter), my relative and friend were talking to the sales guy about bikes they sent to Kenya to schools. They only sent old normal bicycles, not electric ones. My relative asked about trade-in possibility for her old ebike and the sales guy said they don't do that (but they do offer that option on their web pages...), he then said we could leave it there and they would send it to Kenya. Oh really!? I thought: "And what about "we don't send ebikes to Kenya""? (my relative and her friend also found this nonsensical, as she later told me).
Later I heard from my relative that her friend mentioned, about not answering my question about the nexus hubs, that "you know what they want: To sell the most expensive ones.". This was something I kept in mind too already, that he was just pushing the Enviolo automatic that we mentioned we like, because as we don't like rotational shifters the system of automatic shifting would be perfect for my relative and he can easily, he likely thought, convince us go for the expensive bike.
My relative wanted to think it over, but the sales guy said that there is just one in stock of the right size, he would reserve it for her. Just enter your details (phone/email) then call at the end of the day whether you decide to buy it, then they will install the lock and put in a new battery and prepare it for her the next day.
She agreed, we went downstairs to look for locks. I said no to the Axa Block and Defender as the Victory is the best one from Axa and they didn't have Abus or Trelock. The guy dealing with such notes for 'pre-sales' looked at the specs and said the Axa Victory wouldn't fit as it has a tyre clearance of 56 mm, and the tyres mounted on this bike are 55 mm. I said it would fit, I forgot about the high fenders which mean the tyres do have to not just pass the narrow section but that is where the widest part of the tyre would be even mounting the lock as low as you can. But it should fit. The guy said no, gave some reasons, I stated other reasons he said again it would not work and I said "Nonsense". He almost exploded, saying something like "well then you can ", but he stopped himself. From how he said it, it was clear that it was going to be something like, in Dutch "dan zoek je het maar uit", which means "you can figure it out yourself", but which is actually meant as a "fook you". But he stopped himself. I just didn't care. He composed himself and suggested to go check if it works. I said "Ok", so I took one upstairs (*) and it did fit. This is because 55 mm tyres are not actually 55mm wide... Just like 37mm tyres are not actually 37 mm wide but less wide (I mentioned this somewhere on my site). I estimate that the tyres were ca. 50mm wide, in any case there was plenty of clearance between the lock and the tyre.
[ * For some reason they have the bikes and test track upstairs and accessories and clothing downstairs, this is weird, my relative thought it might be about forcing people to go through that section. ]
We then delivered this note of keeping the bike apart for her + the lock to be installed if she did agree to buy it, at the cashier's desk who put it in the system.
Getting home I had a bad feeling about all the nonsense. This was not so much about that guy at the end. I was unfriendly to him, telling him that what he said was nonsense, but I hate know-it-alls who don't know it all and that was just a small part of the issues there. The test track was stupid, the salesman was an idiot, and the guy downstairs wasn't partiticularly useful either.
My relative had to be somewhere that afternoon, she didn't make a decision yet, so I called them to say that she can't yet call nor decide yet, and that in the mean time I would like to know about the warranty. With the Advanced ebike it was 4 years, I think also on the motor, with the Bergamont they told me it is 3 years. After our bad experience with a Bosch middle motor being defective and costing a lot to replace in her older ebike, the duration of the warranty was a point to keep in mind, and as the chain of bike shops selling the Dutch ID bikes offer 5 year warranty for those, this could be a better choice.
Briefly to shop 3: On that same afternoon I made a quick stop at bike shop 3 to enquire about "Dutch ID" bikes as I had a bad feeling about this 2nd bike shop, and I wanted an alternative to the Bergamont e-bike. The 5 year warranty for "Dutch ID" bikes is valid on everything except wear items such as tyres, was another reason to enquire further about these Dutch ID bikes.
The next morning I asked my relative about the Bergamont ebike, had she made a decision yet? No, and she wasn't happy with how it all went there. Her main issue was with the test track, which was just stupid as you can't get up to speed. However she said it was useful as there she noticed the noise from the 85 Nm middle motor.
So this means my views wouldn't influence her, and I then told her that I felt they didn't deserve a sale because of all the nonsense from this sales guy:
- I had checked the Bergamont brand and it was indeed a German brand as I thought it would be, it was from Hamburg so almost as far away from Switzerland as you can be in Germany! (My relative told me she knew the brand was German but she just let him talk)
- He couldn't give an answer as to why there was a huge difference in resistance from easy to hard going in the Enviolo twist shifters in 3 bicycles standing close to each other.
- The talk about the locks was obviously nonsense as well, even if it might have been true for Switzerland (but not really as the region where you sell is what matters)
- I didn't like the pushing for a sale with leaving your information,
- I didn't like the nonsense about your old ebike going to Kenya when he said they don't send ebikes there,
- I didn't like not answering of my question on Nexus hub with push shifter, etc. My relative said I was quite insistent asking the question several times, but that clearly he didn't want to answer the question or have the shop do any effort more than selling (i.e. installing a push shifter instead of rotational) but push us towards the automatic Enviolo, of which her friend said later to her: "You know what a shop wants: To sell the most expensive one".
- The sales guy said they don't take bikes in for trade against a new bike, but on their website this option is offered.
So that morning I suggested to go for a testride of the Dutch Id Phantom, also because of the longer warranty. I called the factory, made an appointment for the next week to go. It was possible on a Friday and Saturday and the person I talked to suggested Saturday which was not my goal, but actually it was good as though we came for a test ride and ask some questions about the bikes, the factory tour was very interesting.
Back to the previous afternoon: So after the disastrous visit to a bike store called 12gobiking I had decided to follow up on my previous suggestion to my relative of the Dutch id Phantom (which she previously discounted because of reviews, however the negative reviews were about the covid situation and deliveries, so not really something a manufacturer can do much about). I looked up the closest bike shop that sells this brand which was quite close to me. I went there and I talked a bit about the various options but they didn't have the Phantom with automatic Enviolo hub in stock to try out so this guy suggested contacting the factory to try out their ebikes as there are test days direct at the factory, in Beverwijk, not that far from us.
The next morning we talked it all over as I mentioned earlier, and I suggested going to Dutch ID in Beverwijk (about 40 minutes by car) for a test ride/overview of the range/ask our questions.
We went there 8 days later, on a Saturday, 2022-11-5. Saturdays are also factory tour days, and this was interesting, see my report here.
Summary: Instead of a silly indoor track, at this factory we just rode outside. That is the only way to be able to safely accelerate up to 25+ km/h. The guy who gave the tour was generally ok, just one thing didn't make sense. I asked why they were using Abus locks, which I said are the worst with regard to the key and knob sticking out. He said they used them for 200 years (obviously not really), but actually, in bike shop 3 I saw an older model Dutch id ebike with Axa lock...
One of the issues my relative noticed on the indoor track was that the Bergamont's motor, a Bosch Performance CX with 85 Nm torque, was not very quiet. This was something we talked about with the guy who gave the tour and he said that this is an issue and the 75Nm motor is better if you want it to be as quiet as possible. He also mentioned that a GPS safety device could be added to all the newest models (not just the version with 85 Nm motor as the information from the current line up stated). The newest models which we then tried out on test rides have a separate input to set the pedal frequency. I rode on the men's model, my relative on the women's model. These were not yet in shops so there could be issues with supply which they mentioned during the tour. We went to the bike shop directly after the tour/test ride and the bike shop enquired with the factory after the weeked about availability of the model (colour/size) we wanted. He was told that the black version could be delivered in March, and the version in slate gray (which looks a bit like 'sand' coloured) only in May! That is a long wait...
The guy we dealt with in the 3rd shop said the bike my relative wanted would be available only in May 2023! However, he asked with the factory if one got delivered with another shop, and they told him which other bike store got the bike of the size/colour she wanted. He then arranged to get it from that other bike store so she got it a week or so later... We did have some issues with the cadence setting, it looks like you need to press the middle button that lights up (and connects with Bluetooth if you install the Enviolo app on your phone) after power up. For the rest the bike is pretty cool. I miss a bottle cage mount though, if I were to buy a pedelec, it would actually need to have 2 bottle cage mounts...
More to come if needed...
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Last modified: 2022-11-24